A blog on all things delicious. Early posts are records of my favorite meals from three months in New York City. Current entries now coming to you from Seattle, Washington, and will focus more on cooking experiments and ideas.

Monday, August 31, 2009

My brother tipped me via text yesterday to try Siggi's Icelandic Yogurt. I took his advice, dropped by Whole Foods after work, and bought the blueberry and vanilla flavors. It's a strained style yogurt, apparently made as it is in Iceland, but is from NY. It is only sweetened with Agave and has 0% milkfat. It's quite good, a little pricey, but a nice special treat. The combination of fruity flavor and light sweetness is especially nice and unique. So, the tanginess comes through with the fruitiness. They had some other interesting flavors as well. Check it out. Thanks to Chris for the idea.

When we were in Paris, my favorite place we went to was a small restaurant and bakery called Rose Bakery. It is owned by Rose Carrarini and her husband, who are from England, but moved to Paris to open this wonderful place. They have a big white counter to the right, just as you enter the door. It has the day's pastries, bowls of salads, pizzettes, and other stuff, all piled and stacked to choose from. Lots of people carried it out or ordered and ate there. They also have a menu to order from in the restaurant with things like pancakes, granola, toast, pastries, yogurt, smoothies...etc. for brunch, plus lunch items as well. The design was simple, clean, modern, but so cozy and warm too. We had breakfast there. It was delicious, and since it looked so good, we also had a piece of carrot cake to share, which was AWESOME. They cut them into cylinders with about a half inch layer of cream cheese frosting on top. Absolutely perfect.

The point of this story, other than to make your mouth water for some cake, is that I received the Rose Bakery cook book for my birthday from my brother, and I've just made a recipe out of it.

I decided to try the blueberry scones, because I haven't made scones since I was a very small kid- maybe four? They also looked fairly easy to prepare, and yummy, of course. They are lighter than most scones, with only 1/2 cup of butter, and call for an egg, plus enough milk to make 1 1/4 cups (measured with the egg.) I decided to use lowfat buttermilk, because Tyler Florence told me that buttermilk should be substituted for milk in any baking recipe. There are only 2 tablespoons of sugar, 3 1/3 cups of flour, plus a handful of wheat flour, 2 heaping tablespoons of baking powder, the zest of a lemon, 1 teaspoon of salt, and 2 handfuls of blueberries. I mixed the flours with all the dry ingredients, then the lemon zest, and accidentally added the blueberries before the butter. This made for an interesting situation as I added cubes of cold butter, since I had to try to avoid squeezing berries as I incorporated the butter with my fingers. I was somewhat successful, but lost about 8 blueberries in the process. It was similar to the process of making pie crust, as I pressed butter into flour between my fingers, until it was course and bread crumb-like. I beat an egg, then added buttermilk to it, until I had 1 1/4 cups combined, as Rose instructed. I made a well in the center of the dry mix, then poured the milk/egg into it, and incorporated wet into dry with a fork. I abandoned the fork far too soon and went straight to using my hands, which was VERY sticky and difficult to manage. Next time, I'll continue with a fork until I've added enough extra flour to make the dough workable. I floured a surface, and plopped the dough onto it, patted it into a circle lightly, and use a knife to cut rough little triangles or squashed squares (I don't have any biscuit cutters). I brushed the tops with a beaten egg, and placed the pan in a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. They were golden and very shiny and pretty. I did not put any light brown sugar on top, as Rose suggests, before I baked, because I didn't have any and I forgot.

I ate one warm, with some blackberry jam, which was great, but the recipe says to serve with Creme fraiche. Greek yogurt might be good, with honey too, but the jam was really delicious. So, scones are good, and pretty easy to make, and you probably want to try some.

I was inspired by an article in the NY Times by Mark Bittman, The Minimilist, to make some frittatas emphasizing veggies rather than eggs. Although I did plan to do that with my egg dishes, I'm not really sure if there was a higher vegetable to egg content. Oh well, they were both delicious, and still very vegetable-y.

The first was a Red bell pepper and zucchini frittata. I started by sauteing the peppers and thin slices of zucchini in a little olive oil, with some salt and pepper, until nice and soft. I also put in some chopped fresh Italian parsley, right before the eggs. While that was happening, I whisked 3 eggs together, and proceeded to pour that right in with those veggies. The heat was on fairly low at this point. Keep in mind, I used a rather large pan for the amount of eggs - a 10 inch non stick one, to make a thin frittata. I let that cook for a couple minutes, until it was set on the bottom, then popped it all in the oven with the Broiler on high. Oh, first I topped it with about a table spoon of goat cheese - sprinkled around. I watched it as it got golden brown and bubbly and the cheese melted, for approximately 2 minutes. I took it out of the oven, then sliced it into wedges, and ate it with a tomato on the side. Delicious.

The second frittata I made followed the same process, although the veggies of choice were red pepper, red onion, and about a cup of frozen sweet corn. All that, sauteed, and for the eggs - 2 whole and one white. Topped again with goat cheese, and broiled up! This was very tasty. It was like a southwestern corn salad...in egg form! I think the first frittata I made tasted better as left overs. For some reason, the onions didn't do so well after another day in the fridge. The other one, however, was great as lunch the next day.